Modesty

in

Today's World
An Insight

Modesty is a virtue that is elusive to many and seem to have been forgotten through the passing of age as if it is a thing of the past and being abhorred by the people at present. As the years go by, many have set aside modesty to the creeping speed of arrogance and conceitedness. Modesty should have been a virtue that will restrain our choice for clothing, giving us the proper and decent appearance that is within the moral bounds, retrain our manners that will make us humble yet ready to understand others, restrain our conduct and attitudes that will make us truly great and caring.

He who is truly mighty great and powerful wields the gentlest pressure, and he who is mighty and powerful yields to the gentlest pressure, as the old saying goes.

Every person becomes himself with the influence of his environment. His environment are the ones he was born to and continue to live with where he draws power, inspiration and learning. These could be his biological parents, colleagues and friends, mentors, and almost everybody he deals with constantly or occasionally. He even draws inspiration and learning from his enemies and adversaries. Another saying goes learn from the mistakes of

others. This method is analogous to what is offered as case study/ case analysis in formal schooling.

There is always a moment of learning and occasions of unlearning, that is, forgetting the bad ways that you have learned and practiced by replacing them with new yet good ways and practices. Modesty is defined as the quality or state of being unassuming or moderate in the estimation of ones abilities. Other definitions would include behavior, appearance or manner intended to avoid impropriety or indecency.

Being in the quality state of being unassuming or moderate in the estimation of ones abilities would mean for one to be extremely cautious not to be tempted to show others some talents or abilities that would set high some egos or result to superiority complex over other people. This other state of being oftentimes gives rise to ego-tripping that will ultimately result to tension and misunderstanding among others and even groupings of the same traits such as colleagues and friends.

Some people tend to display superiority over other people in order to gain control and dominion over others. A display of superiority oftentimes is a defense mechanism to cover some weaknesses or to ward off strong and potent competition. So as not to be bullied or ruled over, people tend to set aside and forget momentarily the virtue of modesty. This is manifested by people who tend to overdress to impress, talks over-confidently much with the semblance of haughtiness to show off or boast their supposedly superior knowledge and behaves with overacting tendencies to catch attention. A boastful person is oftentimes abhorred by even the closest friend circles because of their tendency to look down on other people and the use of obscene and foul language.

Living in a world without even a trace of modesty is taxing and pressing not only to the person himself but also to all other people that surrounds him. A boastful person seem to live in a world of his own, oftentimes a world of make believe. He makes no friend and looses what he has as nobody ever would dare to share with him a world of make believe. A boastful person would resort to maintaining high maintenance lifestyle just to maintain some status that he wants to project. It becomes an expensive lifestyle that may often draw to a close and bitter ending.

-----------------------The mind dictates what the body should be and everything follows unnoticeable in a very organized manner with rhythmic cadence. The body then would act precisely as what the mind dictates in a very predictable pacing. The mind then, depending on the strength of ones sphere of influence, tries to reach out to another person in an unbelievable fashion and precision. This becomes the power of influence, so strong and irresistible that almost instantaneously, a fad becomes a contagion.

As discussed, this is how the trend in fad, fashion, and lifestyle become so precisely influential to others. This is the same theory that happens in preaching by example. The degree of influence varies because of the different learning traits in every individual.

Modesty when put into practice makes the person considerate of his human nature. As such, he is able to understand better his capabilities, recognize his weaknesses, and understand others based on these conditions. By understanding others, one becomes cooperative and mindful of others. The confluence of diverse mindset as to being frugal and being modest resonates the kind of person one becomes in the final judgment or better known as the final hour when one meets his Creator.

This is a no brainer as to who influenced Modesty to whom. The parents are the first teachers. Their patent lifestyles, beliefs and practices have greatly influenced the children. During the formative ways of children, parents would always remind them to follow in their footsteps, that is to mimic the ways of the parents. To develop their emotional quotient as paternal defense among possible bullies, children should act superior than their playmates. So as not to be outsmarted and left behind, children must observe power dressing. These are the lessons being taught to children in their formative years that become the very constitution of their actions and feelings through their adult lives.

The act of a person is driven by his quest to achieve success in all his undertakings. And since, these basic conditions are all influenced by the mind, success therefore most be measured both by qualitative and quantitative parameters. The United Nations Development Council established parameters in its effort to measure the success rating of every nation, thus the UNDP termed such rating as the Human Development. Human Development compares people from one country to another in terms of quality of life in the aspects of purchasing power parity, literacy level, life expectancy and mortality rate, and several other parameters.

Therefore, to apply the UNDP parameters, success must be measured qualitatively in terms of how happy one becomes, and quantitatively of how many people you made happy.

In its entirety, albeit people become icons of fashion, yet oftentimes they are sad because of varied reasons such as they should always be on the guard so as not to be left behind by the new craze, they should always exert effort to maintain influence to others, and that they should always exude that influence to keep the superiority mindset. All of these mindset are exhausting and may ultimately lead to mental breakdown.

Further investigation revealed that people who are excessive, as oppose to being modest needs lot a lot of energy and power to sustain their momentum, otherwise when they loose steam, their influence on others wanes and withers.

Knowing fully well the wide gap between being modest and boastful, being modest still remains the best and safest choice to achieve success in early life.

.............. Parents, as the first teachers of children, should be the one to instill the value of modesty on children. They should endeavor to make children understand the value of modesty on the context of respect for others and the beauty of simplicity yet sincere.

As very first teachers to their children, parents should continuously preach this value and keep on monitoring the progress of their children to ward off the strong influence of peer pressure and other people.

. ... .. School teachers carries the heavy responsibilities of carrying out the teachings on the value of modesty among children. As teachers, they impress upon children the authority and that their teachings become the bible truth to the children as they grow up. Whatever they teach retains in the mind of the children. This can be likened to a computer parlance of garbage in, garbage out.

Likewise, in its quest to balance the learning and development of children, teachers should remain modest in their examples such as modesty in costumes for school activities, modesty in dealing with children such as treating equally with time and attention both students coming from well to do and poor families. Sometimes, human as they are, teachers are guilty of giving a little extra treatment to students coming from influential families because of pressure from varied sources.

Early on, children should learn the ways of modesty by knowing firmly well what they want. Children should know how to respect others and accept diversities because of social ranking in life, belief and traditions. Children should also be sensitive of the feelings of other people where they become understanding.

Children should also be guided properly as they navigate through the different stages in life by their social association such as the church and the government. This is to insulate them from the ill-effects of mass media, social connections such as the internet, and the quality of reading materials they patronize. Likewise, children should also be taught the value and the use of money. Some people are conditioned to accumulate wealth that they tend to forget about developing their social stewardship about the creation. They become so detached to the real world that makes them insensitive to the needs of others. -end-